Raid 5 array is now 'Not initialized'???

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tigercorp

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Topic # 114040 5-Feb-2013 22:08

So I'm sitting here watching a movie on the htpc and the movie suddenly stops.

Turns out the data drive is no longer visible in Windows Explorer.

Turns out the data drive (which is a RAID 5 volume) is visible in Disk Manager but it shows as 'Not initialized' and prompts to be initialized :O

The mobo is an ASUS M4A88TD-M and I'm using the onboard RAID controller.

According to the RAID config gui the array is fine and no error events are logged. Similarly there's nothing in the Windows event logs.

How do I go about recovering this without losing the 2TB of data that was on there?

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Reply # 756359 5-Feb-2013 22:42

Ah guts. Tried a reboot?

tigercorp

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Reply # 756370 5-Feb-2013 23:12

Yep, immediately went for a couple of good luck reboots but no joy.

Am currently running the free version of EaseUS Data Recovery which at least seems to see the data on the partition. Will see how much of it is recoverable in another couple of hours when the scan completes I guess...

kyhwana2

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Reply # 756378 5-Feb-2013 23:50

Restore from backup!

tigercorp

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Reply # 756541 6-Feb-2013 13:30

kyhwana2: Restore from backup!

Had it been the work lappies or nas then yep, easily done. But not the movie and music collection... yet :)

13 hours later EaseUS is still running so I've fired up TestDisk which is proving positive. Have it running from a usb drive so I can copy the files (which it finds immediately) to the usb drive before using it to attempt the partition table fix.

tigercorp

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Reply # 757417 8-Feb-2013 17:14

TestDisk ftw.

The only downside was it's CLI and it's not entirely intuitive but with 5 mins of google clear instructions were found.

The upsides were
- being able to run it from the usb drive so it could copy the files back to the usb drive
- being able to backup the partition table data before attempting the partition table fix
- fixing the partition table :)

Woot.

GBristow

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Reply # 757448 8-Feb-2013 18:37

This scenario frightens the bejesus out of me. I've got 6TB of movies and music on a raid 5 and no secondary backup. To me, that's what the last disk redundancy is for. Otherwise I might as well be doing raid 10 or just raid 1. I'll keep that software in mind just in case.

richms

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Reply # 757497 8-Feb-2013 19:17

test disk is also good for turning a GPT disk back to the old one for when you have to put it on an old computer, and also for turning fancy partitions back to the basic ones for windows XP home.

Its got me back from that dreaded "RAW" in disk management several times too. Im guessing its just a problem with windows or NTFS that it gets corrupted in that manner so often.

Richard rich.ms

RileyB

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Reply # 758728 9-Feb-2013 17:19

If you care abut your data, you shouldn't use RAID 5. With a 4 Drive setup, if a drive dies, you have a 40% of a 2nd drive dieing during the rebuild. If you want to look after your data, take a look at ZFS, or possibly raid 6 or 5+1, although they run into the same problems as raid 5 once you start getting over 4 drives in a single array.

richms

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Reply # 758731 9-Feb-2013 17:25

I have never had a second drive fail during the rebuild, and with the dodgey as esata cases I was using a while back there was plenty of rebuilding going on.

ZFS, 6 or 5+1 are not options on server 2003 or 2008 which are all I have access to at the moment, does 2012 add them?

Richard rich.ms

sbiddle

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Reply # 758736 9-Feb-2013 17:39

To add to what others have said RAID5 isn't a good option for what you're doing.

I would only ever use RAID5 in an environment where I wanted the performance gains of RAID5, but had full backups. I would never consider using it as for high capacity storage of content such as media that there was no backups of.

RileyB

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Reply # 758738 9-Feb-2013 17:48

richms: I have never had a second drive fail during the rebuild, and with the dodgey as esata cases I was using a while back there was plenty of rebuilding going on.

ZFS, 6 or 5+1 are not options on server 2003 or 2008 which are all I have access to at the moment, does 2012 add them?

I think 2012 adds "Storage space" which is a pretty good option. And yes ZFS isn't supported by windows, it's needs a dedicated OS (good for building NAS's etc). The more advanced raid levels generally require expensive RAID cards.

richms

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Reply # 758740 9-Feb-2013 17:52

Hmmm, can any of those dedicated OS's for building a NAS do proper domain integration so I can have only some shares accessable by some users etc? That was the big let down with the last nas appliance I tried. It was an all or nothing affair or make users on its own web interface which kinda was klunky and not much use.

Richard rich.ms

RileyB

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Reply # 758742 9-Feb-2013 17:56

I'm pretty sure you can, but they do use web interfaces to do so. There are a number of OS's I think FreeNAS now does ZFS.

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Reply # 758759 9-Feb-2013 19:05

IMO RAID-5 isnt the best, and on cheap consumer kit its a big risk - hard to shift the array to another machine when its run from the motherboard instead of a add-in card.

drives are cheap: if you want redundancy on cheap consumer kit then buy bigger ones and mirror them

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richms

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Reply # 758760 9-Feb-2013 19:14

Mirroring doesnt get you one big volume tho, and that is my main reason for using raid for the media. If it was all to disappear I could get most that I care about back with a few trips to friends places.

At the moment I have stuff on a mess of external drives because my esata case packed it in, it is a nightmare. Really would like something that had 10+ sata slots, and could expand but they all go for enterprise money.

Richard rich.ms

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